


Tesla Would Not Have Approved

by Persiflager



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Exploring Atlantis, Fucking Machines, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:37:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4477868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflager/pseuds/Persiflager
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a soft, slow, whirring noise, like a very expensive refrigerator powering up, and a shiny steel dildo appeared in the centre of the chair’s seat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tesla Would Not Have Approved

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 'mechanical/technological' square on my [ season of kink](http://seasonofkink.dreamwidth.org/8345.html) bingo card.

“Holo deck,” said Rodney.

“Ansible,” said Radek.

“Please. Replicators of the Star Trek variety, i.e. neither sentient nor murderous,” said Rodney.

“Good one. Hm … the TARDIS,” said Radek.

“You know the SGC banned time travel, right?”

“I am aware. It is the relative dimensions in space that interest me. If you assume an n-dimensional folding, taken to its logical conclusion-”

“Oh!” said Rodney.

“Exactly,” said Radek.

“I like the sonic screwdriver,” said Corporal Forsell, gamely joining in. “Could we find one of those?”

“No,” said Rodney, “but congratulations on finding the worst possible answer to the question ‘what is the coolest science fiction technology that we haven’t yet found or invented?’. I’ll explain why. One-”

Radek tuned out the noise with the ease of long practice and tapped on his data pad to check that they were going the right way down the corridor.

While Atlantis was floating in the San Francisco Bay like an enormous, invisible lily-pad, and while the SGC and the military were debating its future with, as usual, little regard for the opinions of the scientists who had lived and worked there for five years, Rodney and Radek had taken the opportunity to go exploring.

After his disastrous experience with Janus’s lab, Rodney had hit upon the idea of examining Atlantis’s records for other Ancients who had been censured for their inventions, reasoning that they too might have hidden away interesting technology in secret rooms. Radek had disagreed with both this logic and Rodney’s definition of ‘interesting’, but, as he had very little else to do and thought it prudent to keep an eye on what Rodney was getting up to, had agreed to accompany him (and carry the tools).

Given the potential risks involved, they had been obliged to take a soldier with them as escort. Radek rather liked Corporal Forsell, a tall, strapping young woman who cheerfully lifted heavy things for them. Rodney appeared to have taken a disliking to her, as he did with some people; in this respect Rodney reminded Radek of a dog his family had had when he was a child, a nasty, yapping thing with a violent and irrational fear of certain items of furniture.

“Actually,” said Radek, interrupting Rodney’s flow of invective, “Tesla drew up plans for a sonic-”

Rodney made a rude noise. “Oh, of course you’d believe that pigeon-loving whackjob. I bet you had his poster up on your wall all through high school.”

Radek glared at him and took a deep breath in preparation for explaining to Rodney the depth and breadth of his wrongness (any kinship he felt with Nikola Tesla had much more to do with his engineering genius and the fact that he too had suffered from an odious, arrogant, credit-stealing boss than it did with his fondness for pigeons, which was excessive even by Radek’s standards) but Corporal Forsell forestalled him by pointing at a closed door and saying, “We are here.”.

They stared at its white, plasticky surface. This area of the city had not been opened for a very long time, and the air was dry and dusty.

“Ok,” said Rodney, tapping away at his tablet. “According to my research this room was used by Nila, who got told off by the Council for ‘frivolous mis-use of resources’. Going by our luck so far it’ll either be a back-up generator or a storage room. What do you have?”

Radek held up the modified life signs detector. “No life signs, no radiation, minimal power.”

“So we’re good to go.” Rodney made a move towards the door but Corporal Forsell stopped him. 

“I will go first,” she said, politely but firmly.

Rodney retreated with poor grace. “Yes, fine, get on with it then.”

Corporal Forsell motioned them both to the side before readying her gun and pressing her free hand to the door panel. The door wheezed open. Corporal Forsell stuck her head and gun inside the room, looked around, entered the room fully, went for a little wander, and finally returned to the corridor to say, “The room is secure. You may enter now.”

“What was she going to do if there was a bomb, shoot at it?” said Rodney as they stepped into the room and Corporal Forsell took up a guarding position just outside the door. “I don’t know why-”

Radek nudged him.

“Oh,” said Rodney as he finally turned to look at the contents of the room - a chair that looked remarkably like the one in their control room, seemingly in perfect condition. “Hello, gorgeous.”

Radek concurred.

…

On closer examination it wasn’t like their existing control chair at all - same basic shape, but the underlying connections and programming were completely different.

“Must have had a job lot,” said Rodney from where he lay underneath the chair, poking at the wiring.

“Hm.” Radek tapped the datapad with dissatisfaction. “I do not see how this could be re-configured to replace the Earth control chair,” he confessed.

Rodney grunted, which was as good as an admission that he couldn’t either. “Hey, if they want one so desperately they can let us go back to Pegasus and borrow that one they were using as a throne on P7X-489. It’s not like they need it.”

“True.” 

There was a soft, slow, whirring noise, like a very expensive refrigerator powering up, and a shiny steel dildo appeared in the centre of the chair’s seat.

Radek pushed his glasses back up his nose and stared at it, mouth hanging wide open like a fool.

“What happened?” Rodney pushed himself out from underneath the chair and stood up. “I fixed a loose connection and felt something turn on-”

Radek gestured at the dildo. It was beautiful - ridged and inhuman, rising from the seat like an invitation. It reminded Radek of the Chrysler building, only with more rounded edges and no needle sticking out of the top. When he could tear his eyes away from it he noticed the other attachments and levers and controls that he hadn’t been able to make sense of, and his brain began to whirl with erotic possibilities.

Rodney’s eyes were comically wide. “Huh. Well, that’s-” His gaze flicked to where Corporal Forsell stood, and then to Radek, and they shared a moment of true understanding.

“Oh, what a shame that this machinery is non-functional,” said Radek as Rodney dived back under the chair. 

“Waste of time!” yelled Rodney. There was a click and the dildo sank from view, the seat sealing over as if it had never been there.

“Yes, I am very disappointed.”

Five minutes later they were out of the room, Corporal Forsell in tow and the Ancient sex-chair safely locked away behind them.

…

The rest of their discoveries were less provocative, consisting of a room full of blue glass sculptures which chimed softly in response to movement, and what appeared to be an Ancient climbing wall with a cushion of pressured air at the bottom to catch you if you fell off. They logged these in the approved fashion and went to get a coffee in the mess hall.

Neither of them said anything when they sat down. Radek didn’t know where to start, and Rodney appeared to be preoccupied in looking at his coffee cup, his fingernails, around the room - everywhere other than at Radek.

Radek could sympathise. It was one thing to agree, silently and in principle, that this very interesting technology would be better investigated away from the narrow-minded eyes of bureaucratic oversight; it was quite another to be the first to confess a not-strictly-professional interest in it. He himself was relying on the fact that Rodney couldn’t remain silent for very long without suffering some sort of internal injury. 

“So, I was thinking,” said Rodney at last, directing his attention to Radek’s left ear. “We never did get a chance to check out those error messages coming from the south-west generator.”

Radek exhaled slowly and wiped his sweating hands on his uniform trousers. The generator was only a short distance from the room with the chair, it was a useful yet dull errand that no-one would question, and Radek knew for a fact that Rodney had already solved the problem and hadn’t got around to writing it up because it hadn’t demonstrated any genius whatsoever, merely the dogged patience to spend two hours working with the Ancient equivalent of the Microsoft Office paperclip. All of which gave them a plausible three hours, at least, with the device.

“Tonight?” asked Radek, his voice carefully steady.

“Better safe than sorry.”

…

It wasn’t a fetish, as such - merely a fantasy, one of many that Radek had not seriously expected to be able to experience outside of his own vivid imagination. When he was a studious teenager, with all the urges of youth and little opportunity to satisfy them, it had occurred to him - wouldn’t it be convenient if he could build a machine that would take care of all that? That could simulate the acts he’d only seen so far in grubby magazines, and others that he’d only read about?

The idea had continued to appeal while he was at university, working long hours in the lab and finding to his disappointment that promiscuity was not as easy to achieve as he had imagined. Now he was forty and once again in the unfortunate position of having time on his hands and not as much sex as he’d like. Most of his colleagues of the past five years had returned home to their various countries for an extended leave, none of his previous acquaintances were located nearby, and Radek had never been very successful at picking up strangers (which was a shame, because by any number of metrics Radek really was an excellent lover; if it was socially acceptable to leave public feedback, like on eBay, then he would undoubtedly have a five-star rating and a correspondingly high number of partners).

As it was he would have to make do with Rodney, who was mostly a terrible person but did possess the skills, knowledge and shamelessness needed to operate an Ancient fucking machine. And, given how he’d been slinking around despondently since the end of his relationship with Dr Keller, there was always the remote chance that he would be grateful, which tended to give Radek approximately the same pleasure that a botanist would feel on watching the petals unfold on a desert plant that only bloomed once every ten years.

…

They reconvened at the appropriate time and made their way to the room.

“So,” said Rodney, dropping his bag to the floor. His voice echoed around the empty lab. The night sky was huge and dark outside the window.

“So,” agreed Radek, feeling a degree of trepidation himself. He had taken the precaution of packing a large bottle of lubricant and several condoms in his tool-bag; now, looking at the inert chair and Rodney shifting nervously on his feet, he couldn’t imagine using them.

“You know, I’m surprised. I was beginning to think the Ancients had evolved past sex. Did I tell you about Sheppard’s thing with that Chaya woman?”

“Yes, many times,” said Radek, crouching down to look at one of the connecting ports. 

“All glowing light and hand-holding, and call me old-fashioned but that just sounds like a huge disappointment.”

“Mm.” Radek shone his flashlight underneath the chair. “Here, look at that.”

Rodney crouched down. “What - oh! Interesting.”

“I thought so.”

They spent the better part of an hour analysing the chair, at the end of which they had reached a number of conclusions: that its primary purpose was for the sexual satisfaction of the user (theory: that the majority of Ancients had indeed evolved past physical sex, and that the builder of the chair had been one of the frustrated few who hadn’t); that, like the existing control chairs, it required an Ancient gene to operate and had a mental component; that it used very little power; that there were a number of built-in safeguards to prevent injury; that there were also a number of built-in attachments and equipment whose purpose was unclear; and that its use would not show up on the city’s sensors.

“They must have been embarrassed,” said Radek.

“Sure, who wouldn’t be? All the rest of the Ancients are there inventing ZPMs and hyperdrives and meditating their way to super-powers while you’re just trying to get off - the last thing you’d want is it setting off alarms in the control room. ‘Oh, look, it’s Flim-Flam again, jerking off like an unascended loser’.” Rodney sat back against the wall and gazed into the distance, presumably having a moment of empathy with his imagined, long-dead masturbator. “Speaking of, we should probably clean this thing before using it.”

Radek blinked. “You want to use it?”

“Yes, obviously. You don’t?”

“I can’t,” said Radek with a shrug. “No gene.” And then, because Rodney looked flustered, he added, “I would have liked to. Even though I do not generally care for being penetrated.”

“Huh, really? I like that. I’ve missed it. Jennifer was very obliging, don’t get me wrong, but I could never shake the feeling that she was doing a check-up while she was in there.”

Radek tried to convey by his facial expression that he was simultaneously sympathetic, appalled and mildly aroused. From the confused look on Rodney’s face, he did not succeed. “I prefer the other role,” said Radek, in the spirit of sharing.

“Huh,” said Rodney again, the inflection different this time. “Interesting.”

“Quite.”

…

The chair looked perfectly clean, like everything else they’d found in Atlantis, and ten thousand years had probably been long enough to destroy any microbes that remained on its surface, but Rodney produced a packet of anti-bacterial wipes and insisted on wiping it down anyway. When he’d finished he clapped his hands together and said, “Right,” before not doing anything whatsoever.

“Would it help if I took my clothes off as well?” 

“Doubtful.”

Radek shrugged, unoffended, and began to disrobe anyway. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rodney do the same. When Radek was down to his underwear and socks, he went to the climate control box on the wall and adjusted the ambient temperature upwards.

He turned back to see Rodney, stark naked apart from his socks, climbing awkwardly onto the machine.

“Don’t say a word,” said Rodney as he turned over and settled himself into position.

Radek didn’t. Instead he took the opportunity to look Rodney over.

For all his complaints, Rodney wasn’t actually in bad shape. His legs were long and strong. His penis was soft but looked perfectly average. His stomach was soft and rounded, his nipples were tiny and pink, his shoulders were broad and powerful. If it hadn’t been for the unpleasant personality and scowling face, Radek would have considered him a moderately attractive man.

“You have a very nice body,” said Radek, because it was the polite thing to say.

“Really? That’s - huh.” Rodney glanced down at himself, looking inordinately pleased. “Thanks, you too,” he said, belatedly and insincerely, and Radek mentally congratulated Dr Keller on having managed to drill some basic manners into him. “Ok, let’s get this show on the road.” He leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and screwed up his face in concentration.

“Are you sure your gene is strong enough?” said Radek after several minutes when nothing had happened.

“It was earlier.” Rodney was red in the face now, neck muscles tight and visible. 

“Kusanagi’s latest data indicates that the mental component is a greater factor than we’d previously thought, and can even compensate for a weak gene if the user’s will is strong enough. Equally, a lack of desire-”

“Yes, thank you Dr Obvious.”

“Perhaps it would help if you prepared yourself?”

Rodney stopped straining and opened his eyes to stare at Radek. “What?”

Radek held up two fingers.

“Oh.”

“Probably wise anyway, in case the machine goes straight to-” Radek paused to think of the most diplomatic way to say ‘doing you like a pneumatic drill’.

“Oh,” said Rodney again, looking a little paler. “Good point.”

Radek fetched the bottle of lubricant and handed it to Rodney. Then, seeing how uncomfortable Rodney looked, he turned discreetly away.

With nothing to look at but the smooth white wall, Radek couldn’t help listening. The quiet click of the plastic cap, the soft, back of the throat exhalations, the slick, wet, sucking sounds - it was intimate and dirty and terrifically arousing. Radek ran his palm over his cock, feeling it swell against his hand, and adjusted himself so that it was tucked safely under his waistband. 

“Uh,” said Rodney, his voice high and tight. “Little help?”

The problem was immediately apparent when Radek turned to look - that sitting on an upright chair was a terrible position for this particular activity. Rodney had managed to scoot his bottom forward and bend his left leg so that his foot was up on the arm, but it didn’t look comfortable and by the frustrated expression on his face it hadn’t been wholly effective.

“I can’t quite reach-”

“Yes, I see, let me-”

“Jesus Christ, is that a baseball bat in your shorts?” 

Radek looked down, then up again. “No, it is my penis.”

“But it’s huge.”

“Larger than average, yes.”

“And you’re-”

“Smaller than average, yes.”

Rodney was still staring at Radek’s crotch with an expression on his face that Radek was intimately familiar with - recognition that something was potentially very good news for him warring with intense, almost violent jealousy. “Well,” said Rodney eventually, his face relaxing, “I guess some guys have all the luck.”

“I work for an egotistical tyrant, my life is endangered on a weekly basis and all my pigeons are dead.” Radek held up the now-lubricated fingers of his right hand. “Do you want me to finger you or not?”

Rodney spread his legs wider.

“Good.”

The position still wasn’t such as would enable Radek to see what he was doing so he reached underneath Rodney’s balls and slid his fingers back along the cleft until they ran over the tightly bunched furl of Rodney’s asshole. Concentrating firmly on technique so as to not get distracted by the absurdity of the situation, Radek stroked the pad of his index finger across the muscle until he felt Rodney relax and then slipped it in. Rodney was hot and smooth and tight inside. One of them was breathing heavily, and he wasn’t sure who.

“Up a little - ah, there,” said Rodney.

“Yes, yes, I know.” Radek rubbed the soft, swollen gland, listening to the breath catch in Rodney’s throat, and watched Rodney’s cock as it stiffened and rose up from his stomach. “Would you like another-” Radek froze as he felt something cool and metallic touch his hand.

“What?”

“One moment.” Radek ducked down and squinted underneath Rodney’s bottom until he could make out a slim metal tendril, approximately finger-sized, emerging from the centre of the seat and nudging up against his own index finger where it currently disappeared inside Rodney’s body. “That answers that question. Congratulations Rodney, you have successfully activated one of the attachments.” 

“Oh good, I - oh fuck.” The metal tendril had managed to work itself into Rodney, following Radek’s finger all the way inside.

“Are you ok?”

“Yes, it’s just - holy _shit_.”

Radek watched in fascination as the tendril thickened and swayed, moving side to side and thrusting in and out in a pattern that seemed almost intelligent, as if the machine was testing out Rodney’s responses.

“May I remove my finger now?”

“Sure, whatever,” said Rodney with a gasp.

Radek carefully pulled his finger out, noticing as he did so how the metal device immediately swelled to replace him. He stood up, stretched until his back clicked, and cleaned his hand with one of the wipes before turning back to observe what the machine was doing to Rodney.

The chair had reclined until Rodney was lying on his back, his legs now on the appropriate supports, his hands gripping the arm rests. One difference from the main control chair was immediately obvious - that the leg supports on this chair were separate, allowing Rodney’s legs to be spread wide and raised up. Radek stepped close and bent down to see that the metal tendril was more like a tentacle now, approximately the width of a slender carrot but much more flexible. It thrust in and out of Rodney’s pink, shining asshole, seemingly to a rhythm of its own.

“How much of this are you consciously controlling?”

“Remarkably little,” said Rodney. “I think it’s more of a - uh - veto power. I can’t make it do anything but I can stop it.”

“Oh? What did it try?”

“It attacked my nipples.”

“Ah.” There was a visible sheen of slickness on the first inch of the tentacle sticking out of Rodney, marking a lubricated tide mark of penetration. “The coefficient of friction of this material must be remarkable,” said Radek, palming his erection. His voice sounded strained in his ears. His neck felt hot.

“Yeah, I’m guessing it’s made out of the same material as the puddle-jumpers, which is probably going to make the next maintenance day really weird.”

The tentacle was now as thick as a cucumber and still growing. Ridges rippled down its side, a more mobile version of the static chrome dildo that had first appeared to them. It had switched from its side-to-side, exploratory probing to a straightforward thrusting action. Rodney was holding himself perfectly stiff to be fucked, his thigh muscles bunched tight, his cock hard and pointing upwards like the gnomon of a particularly rude sundial.

“You don’t want it to touch your dick?”

Rodney groaned. “I’ve been _trying_. Apparently my subconscious doesn’t want me to come yet.”

Radek pressed his hand against the shaft of his cock through his underwear, rubbed his thumb over the head as it stuck up over his waistband, and finally pulled it out through the fly into the warm air of the room. “You mind if I-”

“Couldn’t care less,” said Rodney, breathless.

Radek stroked himself luxuriously, using both hands, and tried to decide whether that sentence should have ended with ‘masturbate quietly by myself’ or ‘ejaculate all over your annoying face’, and, if the latter, what that said about his present psychological state.

“Ah, fuck.” Rodney’s cock was still bobbing about untouched but there were several slim metal tendrils extruding from the chair around him, swaying uncertainly. “Nearly got it.”

“You could just touch yourself,” said Radek, who was busy doing just that. 

“I said I’d nearly got it. I just need to concentrate.” Rodney screwed his eyes up tight, his face now red, his chest flushing pink right down to his nipples which Radek suddenly felt inclined to lick. He had never seen anyone work so hard at being fucked; it was oddly appealing.

The tendrils waved closer to Rodney before suddenly retracting and disappearing completely. The wet, obscene sounds of fucking disappeared as well, and Radek looked down to see that the tentacle penetrating Rodney had also gone. 

“Your subconscious is an interesting place,” said Radek, feeling almost dizzy with schadenfreude. “Deep down you must realise you are a terrible person who deserves to be punished.” 

“Screw you, Dr Monster Dick.” Rodney glared at Radek’s crotch, then looked by turns thoughtful, greedy, resigned, and resolute. “Fine. Get over here.”

Radek paused mid-stroke. “What?”

“I need you to fuck me.”

“You can’t just jerk off like a normal person?”

“My body’s got used to the prostate stimulation now, it would be disappointing.”

Radek looked at Rodney’s bossy, aggravating face and then down at his well-lubricated asshole, all pink and gleaming and soft. “Hm.”

“Look, you want to stick it in something, I want something stuck in me - this isn’t exactly rocket science.”

“So romantic.”

“You want romance?”

“From you? No.”

Reaching a decision, Radek fished a condom out of his tool-bag and rolled it on. It looked ridiculous, his latex-covered erection sticking out from his blue-and-white striped underwear, so he tucked it back through the slit and took off his underwear.

“Jesus Christ, I never knew you were such a princess about-”

Stepping close, Radek took his cock in one hand and guided it to Rodney’s entrance. The size differential looked large but not unmanageably so, and when he pressed in Rodney opened up easily.

“Are you alright?” Radek asked when he’d got the head in.

“Peachy.” Rodney looked relaxed, lying back with his eyes closed and one hand on his cock.

“Good.” Bracing himself with his hands gripping the chair back either side of Rodney’s waist, Radek set to fucking him.

There was a peculiar freedom to fucking Rodney - he was so selfish, and so vocal about physical discomfort, that Radek felt little need to maintain conversation. He was free to please himself, safe in the knowledge that Rodney would not hesitate to speak up if all was not perfectly to his satisfaction. Radek let himself get lost in the sensations, thrusting slowly at first and then with growing vigour until his hips were like pistons, driving him forward into Rodney’s welcoming body.

“Ah jeez,” said Rodney as he came on Radek’s stomach.

“Do you,” said Radek in between thrusts, “need me to stop?” Sweat was trickling down his back and he honestly wasn’t sure he could stop if he tried - his body seemed to be moving on its own, chasing the orgasm he could feel coiling its way round the tops of his thighs, his belly, growing thick in his throat. He grabbed Rodney’s hips for extra leverage and let his head hang down and his eyes close as he thrust forward like a flame racing along a fuse and finally crashed down, pleasure flashing through him as sharp and bright as a magnesium flare.

“Nah, I’m good,” said Rodney into the silence. “Feel free to pound away like a jackhammer.”

Chest heaving, Radek stood still for a few minutes until he’d caught his breath. He opened his eyes, wincing at the bright light, and let go of Rodney’s hips, noticing with a faint twinge of embarrassment that there were visible white lines from his clutching fingers. He pulled out as slowly as he could, stepped away from the chair on wobbly legs and began the tedious but necessary process of cleaning himself up and re-dressing. Behind him he could hear Rodney doing the same.

When Radek was once again presentable, he turned to see Rodney buttoning up his shirt.

“Please, don’t tell me you’ve never had awkward sex in the lab before.”

“Not like this,” said Radek. He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated by Rodney’s flippancy and by the convention that dictated that sexual experiences could and should be re-written retrospectively, denying the body’s reality - that night was a mistake, this encounter never happened, our first time was magical and perfect in every way. “This conversation is indeed awkward but the sex was not. I enjoyed myself very much. I would happily have sex with you again, in or out of the chair, although I would suggest it is in both our interests to keep it discreet. I have no interest in dating you.”

“Oh.” Rodney paused with his hands on the middle button of his shirt and just for a moment Radek could see the painfully insecure and marginally less annoying man that lived beneath Rodney’s shell of awfulness and kept Radek from murdering him. “Well. Right back atcha.” He finished doing up the buttons, which Radek assumed indicated the end of the emotional portion of the evening but then Rodney said, “Am I really a terrible person?”

Radek sighed. “Only mostly.”

“Oh, good,” said Rodney. “Thanks.”

And there it was – genuine, unforced gratitude, as delicate and beautiful as poppy petals. Radek cleared his throat and looked around the room to make sure that all evidence of their presence had been removed, then hefted his tool-bag. “Ready?”

“Yeah, let me just-” 

There was a quiet swishing sound and a wall panel on the far side of the room slid open to reveal a secret room.

Rodney’s grin was unholy.

…

Several hours later, Radek heard a discreet cough and looked up to see Colonel Sheppard standing just inside the entrance to the secret room, his outline clearly silhouetted by the pale dawn light creeping in behind him.

“Morning, fellas.”

“Good morning, Colonel Sheppard.” Radek straightened from his position bent over the lab bench and winced as his stiff muscles made themselves loudly known. The object in his hand appeared to be a highly advanced cap-opener that could also heat food in an instant, using technology that Radek could only describe as a miniaturised death ray. He set it down.

“Lightsaber, John,” said Rodney urgently, scrabbling up from where he’d been kneeling on the floor and holding out a slim grey cylinder. “An actual lightsaber. Look!” He pressed a button and three feet of glowing orange light shot out of one end, narrowly missing Rodney’s feet and leaving a dark brown scorch mark on the floor.

Sheppard’s eyebrows shot up. “Why don’t I take that.” He carefully took the lightsaber out of Rodney’s hand and clicked it off before pocketing it. A sharp, unpleasant smell of burnt plastic hung in the air. “Looks like you two’ve been busy,” he said, looking round the room at the many and varied devices they’d found in this Aladdin’s cave of technological wonders.

“Oh, you know,” said Rodney, swaying slightly. “It’s like Christmas morning, except without the disappointment and bitter arguments. Who needs sleep?”

“How did you find this place?”

Rodney looked suddenly shifty. “I don’t have time to explain,” he said, which was bound to arouse suspicion, and, “You wouldn’t understand,” which was worse, and “Zelenka helped,” which was utterly damning.

Radek felt Sheppard’s gaze settle on him like a heavy, over-friendly hand on his shoulder. He tried to smile in a way that suggested ‘yes, I did most of the work and he took credit as usual’ rather than ‘yes, I helped with my penis’.

Sheppard squinted at Radek. “Do I want to know why there’s a control chair back there all covered in warning signs?”

Radek considered the question in light of everything he knew about Sheppard. “No,” he concluded with regret, looking Sheppard up and down. “No, I don’t think so.”

Sheppard gave him an odd look and walked away.

Radek yawned hugely before starting to tidy away his tools and make sure that all their new toys were safely turned off. He worked around Rodney, who had lain down on the floor and gone to sleep, and over the familiar, gentle, whistling snores he could just make out the faint buzz of a lightsaber being wielded in an empty corridor.


End file.
